Being confined in our homes has been an unfortunate reality for most of us these past few weeks. But why despair when you have apps that help you keep abreast of ticket status regardless of whether you have access to the internet or not, provide remote support to your customers at the touch of a button, and answer calls without disrupting your work.
Business continuity is a challenge we are all currently facing, as most of us are unable to step into our office. During this time of social distancing, businesses rely on technology and software to collaborate with our team, interact with clients, and update information. Software applications can be broadly categorized into two categories: ‘on-premise’ and ‘cloud’.
Communicating an ongoing crisis is a mammoth task for any business. Even more so in the time of a pandemic like the novel coronavirus. Unless you have a detailed crisis communication plan in place, the lack of clarity and information might put your frontline support reps in a tight spot when they are trying to reassure your customers.
What do your customers want? This question has been asked more than any other question in today’s competitive business world. Undoubtedly, this era belongs to customer experience, and every company is striving to provide the best possible experience to its customers. While it is crucial to understand your customers, it is equally important to explore the fundamentals of customer interaction. Every great business works on the rule of thumb of seeing the world through the customer’s eyes.
Against the backdrop of the novel coronavirus pandemic, different business operations have adopted a new style of working (work-from-home) and have started functioning remotely to maintain business continuity. Customer support teams too have started supporting customers from the safety of their homes. Amidst the uncertain times, as Jack Ma said, you have to adopt new practices, change existing processes, and do it quickly.
Customer Experience (CX) is increasingly becoming the single most important factor which can sway customer loyalty. That means that even if you have a better product, you can lose market share to your competitor, who provides a better experience to the customer at every touchpoint through the customer lifecycle. That includes during trial, purchase, support, renewals, or product usage. With digital transformation shaping businesses in the last decade, our reliance on IT is accelerating.
For decades, outsourced customer support was considered an easy way for businesses to increase support bandwidth at a reduced cost. But in too many cases, the quality of service suffered as a result. As recently as 2018, a survey by Gladly found that 61% of customers felt like they were treated as nothing more than a case number.
Founded in 2010, Freshworks is a global SaaS firm that provides customer engagement solutions for organizations of all sizes. The firm entered India’s unicorn club (start-ups valued at or above USD 1 billion) in July 2018. The firm has grown from a 6 member team in 2010 to a 2500+ member strong company and has a dozen products under the Freshworks brand.
With the new year setting in, you might have already identified new leaves to turn, and set your customer service objectives accordingly. Along with the goals that you have already framed, here are five questions that can help you reflect on your current support setup, ensure that you are on the right track, and fine-tune your objectives for the year.
When you’re a part of a customer-facing team, it is easy to feel bogged down by the sheer volume of customer queries or complaints you need to resolve. C-level executives who head customer experience and customer service functions feel similar heat too, when customer ratings drop. On such days, you might have needed that extra bit of motivation to really drive you… and that’s completely normal! A shot of espresso could work one day, a pizza can do the trick on another.
